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How to transfer everything to my new mac mini with Fusion Drive?

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Xeronimo74

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 15, 2010
27
0
Hi,

I've got an older mac mini which can only run Lion but not Mountain Lion. In order to avoid having to reinstall everything I thought about restoring that Lion mac to my new mac mini (the one with the Fusion drive) and then upgrade it from Lion to Mountain Lion ...

Does that make sense? And is it even possible with the Fusion drive? Does Lion work on a Fusion drive?

Or what other options do I have to transfer all my programs and data from the old one to the new one?

Thanks a lot!
 
Hook the two Macs together using an Ethernet cord and use migration assistant (in the utilities folder) to transfer your data to the new mini. It should offer the option to transfer everything. ML probably has better support for fusion drive, so I wouldn't recommend downgrading
 
Lion probably won't work on a Late-2012 Mac, as it won't have the drivers for the hardware.
As COrocket says, just use Migration Assistant, connecting your old Mac directly, or use your Time Machine backup as the source.

Migration Assistant will move everything over for you: apps, documents, settings, etc. A few complex apps may need reinstalling, but most things should be fine.
 
I have to be doing the same thing myself... migrating apps over to a new mini. Is there any advantage of using ethernet vs firewire?

I've bought a number of cables and adapters for the new mini in that respect.... short ethernet cable, fw 800>400 adapters.
 
Yes.
But honestly, just power up your new Mac, and the Setup Assistant will talk you through the whole process and offer you all the options.
 
Migration Assistant, like others said. However I had exactly the same setup (old Mini on Lion, new 2012 with Fusion) and I used an external USB drive on the old Mini with Time Machine. I just ran the migration from the TM backup, the old Mini wasn't even powered up. Worked perfectly.
 
I second using an external drive. Clone your old HD to an external and do the transfer from there. I maybe overly paranoid, but I feel better making transfers like this from a clone to protect the original.
 
I used migration assistant to migrate all my settings, files and apps from my Mac Pro running Lion to my new Mini running Mtn. Lion. They were both running on the same network not connected directly to each other. Migration Assistant rocks everything looked exactly like my old computer even saved tabs in Safari and saved application states. It moves everything.
 
I actually just got my new Mini this morning and migrated everything from my old C2D iMac just using an external hard drive. Just exported bookmarks, contacts, etc. and then copied the Documents, Music, and Pictures directories and then re-imported on the brand-new machine.

iTunes, iPhoto, etc... all picked up the directory structures no problem!
 
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